PITTSBURGH – NHL draft prospect Ryan MacInnis offers both a reflective answer and a joking reply to the question of why he doesn't play defense as his Hall of Fame father Al did.

"I like skating forward more than backwards," MacInnis said with a grin.

But the real reason is he thought it allowed him to carve his own path without being compared to his father.

"I thought it was big shoes to fill as a defenseman," MacInnis said just a few hours before he took the ice in USA Hockey's All-American Prospects Game at the Consol Energy Center. The top 40 U.S.-born prospects for the 2014 NHL draft were invited to the game.

The 6-4 St. Louis-area player is a center for the Kitchener (Ontario) Rangers, and he's projected to go somewhere in the first three rounds of the draft, depending upon how his season goes. The consensus now is that he probably will go in the second round, possibly late in the first round.